Man of the Moment
by c h ee r w ii n e
Summary: The Account of the Joker's Capture, and The Fall of Harleen Quinzel, The Rise of Harley Quinn.


**An Introduction.**

He opened his eyes and blinked blearily. The pain of dilating pupils, like to that of a bitterly cold icy treat, rushed to meet his already fuzzy brain. _Why did they have to make these places so damn bright all the time? _He tried to raise his hand to rub his eyes, but the jolt of chain on skin held him back. So he tried to bring his eyes to his hand, and well, that didn't work so well either. Frustrated, he flopped his head, full of dishwater curls matted by wore-off green die, back on the stiff excuse for a bed. More like a coroner's table with some bubble wrap underneath a gauzy sheet of white cloth. He did like bubble wrap. _And coroner tables. _His red tongue snaked past his scaly lips, and he noticed something different. His taste buds were strangely starved of the poignant taste of grease makeup. _Bastards, crashing my party AND taking my makeup. We'll just see about that. _He grinned to himself, feeling the hardened scar tissue of his Glasgow smile fight against the natural pull of his skin. He was fighting a giggle; a small snort escaped, and he bit down on his lip to hold it in. A dab of blood pooled on his tongue. _Tastes like the barrel of a gun. _He bit down harder and his chest trembled with withheld laughter.

Suddenly, the high-pitched din of robotic beeps and the clamor of thick, metal locks retracting broke the silent cage. Quickly swallowing his laughter, he sat up to the extent his steel restraints would allow, hunching over slightly to where his dirty locks fell in his face. He was in the process of letting out a tired sigh when those same dirty locks were grabbed and tugged viciously backwards, throwing his head back up at the blinding fluorescents. His nose scrunched up and his yellowing teeth grimaced as his dark eyes darted over to his man-handler.

"God! Can't a guy get a break around here? I mean, really, what'd I do to you? Kill your father? Your uncle? Oh, oh, wait, lemme guess,… your second cousin twice removed on your mother's side? I think his name was Bobby, might've reconnected with him over coffee a while back, gr-"

"SHUT UP you son-of-a-bitch!" the man commanded, slamming his face against the 6-inch thick, glass wall, before pulling it back just as fast, leaving a mark of saliva and blood behind. The man, average and middle-aged, dressed in the typical black garb of an official, tightened his grip even more until the neck was pulled back as far as it would go. The stinging of his straining hair follicles made him flinch and squint, but yet a smile was plastered on his face. The man stared with hatred at his seemingly unfazed captor for a moment.

"I'm guessing my last one was right, huh?" his captor mused with a chuckle.

The man tugged, getting a reaction of laughter instead of pain. He brought his face in close to the head he held in his tight grasp.

"Listen here _Joker_," the man's gritted teeth dripped with poison, "you think this is all just a game don't you, you sick bastard?"

The Joker glanced to the side and smacked his lips nonchalantly.

"Well yeah," he replied, without batting an eyelid.

The man came in so close and with such vehemence that he could feel the fog of his breath and the hot pricks of his spattering spit on his cheeks.

The man practically hissed,

"I thought I had seen your kind, overrunning the streets of this city like sewer rats, but…mmphh…I was wrong. _You're just a freak_. A freak who finds pleasure by slaughtering anyone in his path, anyone that gets in his way of his game. But that is your game, isn't it?

"You have no mercy. You have no soul. You have no concern for your own life. This is just a sick, sick fun house for you. You would…-"

Even as the man rambled on with his breath wreaking of that day's lunch clouding over his face, Joker's mind was busied on something other than listening. Underneath the attention of the still-nagging man, his hand struggled to pull free from the clutches of the steel ring. A burning sensation and a warm trickle slowly crawled from his right wrist. He thought the man had started to falter slightly in his string of words just as the bystanders of police and doctors outside the glass box stirred. _They're catching on._ In that moment his hand popped free and he snatched up the ballpoint pen in the man's pocket, hastily shoving it deep and precise in his victim's ear. The unfortunate man cried out and collapsed to the floor. The door unlocked again. The Joker licked his lips. Blood from his suspended wrist dripped onto the shiny floor next to his victim, writhing in agony. A fit of laughter broke from his mouth, joining in cacophony with the screams. He was thrown back against the bed. The room dissolved into black and the sounds drained away…

He opened his eyes into darkness, a pleasure that the fluorescents were off. His head felt heavy with the underlying pressure of a headache; his mind felt fuzzy and vague. _Gettin' trigger happy with their darty-dart gun, I see. _Several places on his body still tingled with numbness. In an effort to raise the fog off his cranium, Joker craned his neck from side to side, savoring each gritty 'pop' and 'crack' from his bones. His mouth smacked a few times and he realized the unusual thickness of his tongue, how absolutely starved of liquid he was. It was also then he realized the horrible discomfort of his stomach, so deflated that he swore it must have been lying on his spine like a dead balloon by now. _As if they care. _His mind started to idly wonder what he would do to appease his appetite. _Cannibalism? Now that's…strange… _A toothy grin spread onto his face. He pondered in great detail about his next victim, coming in for a check, when he would suddenly surprise them with an untimely death. _I do hope they like surprises._His hands attempted to act out the horrific scene, but he discovered that they were bound to his body, crossed like a mummy's, underneath the dingy white of his new garb – a straitjacket. On his legs he found gray scrubs, stained by the last unfortunate prisoner he presumed. _Just had to be greedy, didn't you?_ Stripped of his beloved makeup and purple suit, patterned shirt, green vest get-up, the Joker looked strangely…ordinary. And he wasn't particularly fond of that. His mind, having been diverted for a moment to his clothing, returned to its prior thoughts. _Nah…nah, nah, nah. Don't think I'll give that one a shot anytime soon. _

He struggled to sit up, finding his caged life far too unobservable whilst lying. Swinging his feet around, he felt his feet touch the hard, cold, tile floor. _Cold…lifeless._ He snickered a little to himself. Hours earlier the corpse of his latest victim lay there, a pen protruding from the left of his skull, the body twitching with tiny spasms here and there. His cotton tongue made a sweep over his parched lips. He never really did hark back to the people he killed, rather, how he killed them, but even then that wasn't recalled often.

The Joker was a man of the moment.


End file.
